Raging Heat by Richard Castle Read Free Book Online Page A

immediate attention, even from behind the glass. As a rule—and a sound one—Heat kept the captain out of the loop on most investigations until they closed. The Iron Man had too great a knack for gumming the works, at best; monkey-wrenching the whole deal, at worst. Trapped now, she sketched out the case in its leanest bullet points and explained how she came to identify a rich and powerful Port Authority commissioner as someone she wanted to interview in a suspicious death inquiry.
    “You sure that’s a smart play?”
    “I’m taking it you don’t, sir.”
    Irons peered over his gut to check the shine on his shoes. “I am not going on the record telling you not to follow a lead, Detective. But.” He raised his face to hers. “Keith Gilbert is golf buddies with the fucking mayor. You watch the news, you read the papers. Every night he’s in a tux making rounds at cocktail parties with the biggest political donors in this city, getting greased up to run for senator. Like he needs their Goddamn money.”
    His face clouded and he turned to Rook, as if just realizing he was there. “All this is off the record, right?”
    The journalist winked and mimed a lock and key to his lips.
    Heat had to acknowledge that, for once, her captain’s aversion to stirring trouble was more than his default stance of self-preservation and sycophancy. Keith Gilbert was a force of nature not to be taken lightly. Scion of a wealthy shipping magnate who had let his cargo business go to rust in his old age, young Keith had dropped out of his Harvard MBA program to grab the reins of the family business from his father. Against odds, advice, and common sense, he not only held on to the broke company, he doubled down by committing a fortune to expansion, gambling his own inheritance on a dream.
    Gilbert spent and spent, first renovating the outmoded cargo fleet. Then he spent more, buying up cruise ships from weak players to create a new income stream in tourism, which paid off richly. Through a series of canny moves, luck, and legendary toughness, he boldly saved the broke company and made it flourish.
    He also did it with style. Over the past decade Gilbert’s winning face commonly stared out from multiple covers at newsstands: paragliding the western mountains of Norway; skippering a yacht in the America’s Cup; holding hands with his society bride at their storybook wedding on the Amalfi Coast; or, more recently, laughing as the charismatic guest at dinner parties inside the Beltway with the DC power elite. As if resurrecting a decaying business wasn’t enough of a challenge, the shipping millionaire had set his compass heading for Washington.
    But charming as he was known to be publicly, the once and future knight of the next Camelot also had a reputation as a bullyboy. Behind his back—always with a look over the shoulder—critics knew he took no prisoners. One joke making the rounds speculated that the environmental affront floating in the middle of the Pacific known as the Great Garbage Patch was really just the remnants of anyone who ever said no to Keith Gilbert or got in his way.
    Heat knew all that. But she also knew doing her job meant not being afraid of uncomfortable places and the powerful that inhabit them. “Sir, I appreciate your caution. And I hope you recognize that I would never approach anyone disrespectfully, whether they were wealthy and connected like Keith Gilbert or poor and marginalized like Fabian Beauvais.”
    “Who?”
    Rook pointed to his name on the Murder Board and mouthed, “Victim.”
    “You’re gonna do this aren’t you, Heat.”
    “The address and phone number of his summer mansion was written on an envelope containing ten thousand dollars hidden in the floor of a dead man’s apartment. I think it’s good police work to at least ask Commissioner Gilbert a few questions.”
    At a loss, Irons said, “Keep me looped in,” and retreated toward his fishbowl.
    “As always, Captain,” said Heat.